This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which drivers you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required drivers have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.

Page Contents Author Introduction Editing This Page Specifications Linux Compatibility Notes Related Resources Summary

If you are looking to purchase this laptop you can visit HP's Presario notebook page.

Author

Michael Pavletich

Introduction

This is a guide to running Linux with the HP-Compaq Presario F551UA laptop.

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Specifications

Processor	AMD Mobile Turion TL-50 1.6ghz
Screen	15.4" WSXGA+
RAM	512MB
HDD	80GB
Optical Drive	DVD+-RW
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 (embedded)
Network	NVIDIA MCP51 10/100 Ethernet, Broadcom 802.11g Wireless, Bluetooth
Other	3 x USB2.0

Linux Compatibility

Device	Compatibility	Comments
Processor	Yes
Screen	Yes
HDD	Yes
Optical Drive	Yes
Graphics	Yes	Use the 'nv' Xorg driver
Sound	Yes	Use the snd-hda-intel driver
Ethernet	Yes
Wireless	Yes	See notes below
Bluetooth	Not Tested
56K Modem	No
USB	Yes
Firewire	Not Tested
PCMCIA	Not Tested

Notes

Everything above that worked was from a standard installation. Wireless flaky with the bcmwl5 driver. OEM driver is bcmwl6, loads fine, but requires
tweaking to make it work. Probably no issue with a 2.6.20 or later kernel.

nforce4 MCP51 chipset has some issues, not entirely stable during boot, but
good while in use. Reasonably fast machine. Enabling keyboard layout for
compaq armada laptop make most function keys work quite well.

Related Resources

Preparing your laptop for Linux
Configuring a nVidia graphics chip
Configuring the ndiswrapper driver for wireless controllers without native Linux drivers
Increasing battery life
Power management - reasonable. Lid switch works as it should turning off lcd backlight, cpufreq OK, dual monitor with official nvidia driver OK

This notebook requires a recent kernel version to work properly. Early kernels produce faults that may stop the system completing a boot cycle.

Summary

A Linux distribution with kernel version 2.6.20 is recommended for best support of the HP-Compaq Presario F551UA. Linux support is good when an up to date distribution is used.


Have you installed Linux on this laptop? If so how about leaving a comment about your success in the comments section below.